


Walking Down The Broken Road (Side By Side And Hand In Hand)

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Car Accident, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post 160 Fic, Road Trip, apocalypse boyfriends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:06:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23148961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: They’re two hours into their journey back to London when they lose the car.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 12
Kudos: 131





	Walking Down The Broken Road (Side By Side And Hand In Hand)

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place directly after [The World Is Always Ending (So Let’s Make Time Now)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21412927).

They’re two hours into their journey back to London when they lose the car.

Martin had expected there to be traffic when they had left the cottage, driving as quickly as he dared under the bruised looking sky with its staring eyes. He had expected to see people running, screaming, fleeing their homes. He hadn’t expected how empty the towns had looked when he had driven past them. He hadn’t expected the _quiet._

_Where would people run to?_ Martin thinks to himself as he stares at the road ahead of him. If he hadn’t known any better, if he had been living some other life, had taken some other job once upon a time, what would _he_ have done if he had looked out the window and seen eyes looking back down at him, if he had heard a sound like the world tearing itself apart? He would have thought he was going mad for a start, but he would have stayed inside, turned on the TV or the radio to try and find some news on what was happing.

Martin had tried the radio in the car an hour ago. All of the channels had been static except for one that somehow had still been playing music. That one had come through quite clearly, had been playing something so achingly beautiful that he had been upset when Jon had suddenly snapped awake and had slapped his hand against the off button, silencing the song. Martin flushed now to remember how _angry_ he had been, how he had shouted and tried to push Jon’s hand away, how when that hadn’t worked how he had raised his hand to— to—

“The Slaughter!” Jon had yelled as he had caught Martin’s wrist before the blow would have landed. “Martin, listen to me, it’s the Slaughter!”

It had taken at least ten minutes on the side of the road for Martin to stop apologizing, to stop crying, Jon holding him all the while and whispering reassurances. He had offered to drive, but Martin had steadfastly refused. He could keep going. He had been doing well with the actual driving part, the knowledge Jon had given him had done that much. His brain knew how to drive, even if his body wasn’t familiar with it, his back tense and his shoulders aching from sitting up straight for so long, hands tight on the wheel. He could keep going until he needed to rest, and then he could keep going some more. All the way to London.

Jon makes a noise from the passenger seat, something that almost sounds like words, and Martin glances over. Jon eyes are closed again and he isn’t as ashen looking as he had been back at the cabin, but he still doesn’t look at all well. The fact that he’s curled up in Martin’s sweater makes him look small and fragile in a way that hurts Martin’s heart. He glances back at the road laid straight and sure before him, then back over at Jon again. Next time they stop, Martin’s going to check over the bag he’s filled with statements and find Jon something safe to eat. He’s going to insist on it.

Jon’s eyes snap open, glowing the bright yellow-green of a cat’s eye-shine. “Martin! The road!”

Martin’s head snaps back to the road so quickly that he feels something in his neck twinge in protest. He has time to register that there’s something in the road, a lot of somethings before he slams on the brakes, one arm flung out instinctively to protect Jon. Then he’s laughing, hysterical giggles bubbling up out of his throat.

Sheep. There’s a large flock of sheep crossing the road, a sight that had greeted them more than once on their way to Scotland.

“I’m sorry!” Martin says, still giddy with relief, apologizing to Jon, to the sheep, maybe even to the car. “Oh that could have been—“

That’s when the sheep stop ambling across the road and start running, the sounds of their panicked bleating suddenly, terribly loud. Martin has just enough time to register what’s chasing them, _too big too big teeth teeth teeth_ as he blindly reaches out to shift the car into reverse. The thing, now standing in front of the car snarls _too many mouths too many eyes too many_ and _lifts a paw_ _a hoof a talon_ , swatting at the car like a cat toying with a mouse. There’s the sound of flesh striking metal, a terrible feeling of weightlessness, then pain as bright as a lightning flash that swiftly brings darkness and silence with it.

————

“Martin, wake up.” Jon’s voice sounds like a whisper from deep underwater. “Martin wake up. Don’t move. Wake up, don’t move. Please wake up.”

There’s a ringing in Martin’s ears and something warm trickling down the side of his face. He doesn’t move, not only because Jon told him not to move (not a compulsion, but what is probably a sensible suggestion) but because his whole body _aches_. He does, however, open his eyes.

A dozen eyes peer back at him through the broken windscreen. The golden eyes of wolves alongside the weirdly slotted pupils of sheep eyes, large brown cow eyes next to the deep orange eyes of an owl. There are many open mouths along the furred and feathered and woolen body of the thing, some containing teeth as sharp as the knives Daisy had kept hidden in the cottage, others holding large, flat teeth that Martin is sure could crush his bones in a single bite, crack open his skull like a nut.

Martin flinches away from the sight and either the movement or the sound causes the creature in front of him to _howl_ , a sound that burrows all the way down to his bones and claws its way into his hindbrain, almost as terrible as the sound from hours ago that the world had made when the door to all the Fears had been opened. He scrabbles at the seatbelt in a panic, but it won’t release. He has to get out has to get Jon out has to run has to run has to—

When Martin’s vision goes slightly foggy, the first thing he thinks of is concussion. When he starts to feel cold, the first thing he thinks of is shock. It’s not until he realizes that he can barely hear that awful, near deafening howl and that his hands are going _through_ the seatbelt that he pauses in his efforts to escape, the panic slowly bleeding out of him.

_Peter smiles at him, a smile that someone else could have mistaken for warm and friendly as long as they hadn’t looked into Peter’s eyes, which are as cold and uncaring as a wave about to smash against a boat. “I should have known this would come so easily to you. It’s such a relief, isn’t it? Being somewhere where people can’t see you, where they can’t look at you, can’t judge, can’t criticize?”_

Martin’s a half-step removed from the world, unseeable, unknowable, intangible, instinct and fear forcing him to escape the only way he possibly could have. The monster, so terrifying a moment ago, now only inspires a dull memory of fear, like a horror movie monster seen one too many times. Martin could mentally pull back another step and it would vanish like mist. Another step, and another and another and he’d back on the shores of the Lonely, except he can’t do that, he _won’t_ do that, because Jon is—

“ _Martin!”_

Elsewhere it would be a shout, but here it’s a whisper muffled by cotton. Still, Martin hears it, head turning towards the sound, towards Jon, whose glowing eyes are like a lighthouse in the dark, a beacon of safety and warmth. Martin flings out his arm without thinking, reaching out towards Jon at the same time that Jon reaches for him. Jon shouldn’t be able to see him, half out of the world as Martin is, just as Martin shouldn’t be able to touch Jon. Yet their fingers tangle together and Martin _pulls._

There’s a resistance that Martin doesn’t expect, as if Jon has become inexplicably heavy somehow. It could be because Martin has never tried to bring anyone else with him into this halfway space, but he thinks it’s something more than that. The Lonely doesn’t _want_ Jon here with Martin, not again, not after last time.

Martin grits his teeth and pulls even harder in a way that has nothing to do with the muscles in his arms and everything to do with the muscle beating in his chest. “Well that’s just too— _fucking_ —bad!”

Jon passes through the seatbelt with a lurch, falling into Martin’s arms a second before one of the monster’s many appendages smashes through the windscreen, claws slicing through the space where Jon’s torso would have been. The claws withdraw, only to be replaced with a muzzle lined with eyes and filled with teeth, nostril slits flaring as it smells where they had been.

Martin holds Jon close to him, noticing dimly that the places where Jon’s touching him are the only places where there is feeling and warmth. Martin had spent hours roaming the archives in this in-between place, and the numbness had been something that had crept up on him by degrees back then. Is the reason it’s different now because all the Entities are manifest here? Or is it just because the Lonely has a taste for Martin now and wants to try and grab him back before he can be taken away again? It doesn’t matter. He’ll endure whatever he has to if it means getting out of this situation with Jon beside him.

“Are you all right?” Jon whispers. “How long can you—?”

“As long as it takes,” Martin says, and it’s true, it _has_ to be true. “I think I can get us out of the car. Just hold on to me and close your eyes. This— _should_ work.”

_“You can close your eyes if it helps,” Peter says as Martin bumps into the door again. He doesn’t actually_ **_feel_ ** _the solidity of the door, he can’t feel much of anything, but still it balks him._

_Martin fixes Peter with a glare. “And you didn’t tell me that after the first dozen or so tries because…?”_

_Peter just smiles._

Martin closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and stands up. Nothing stops him from doing this impossible action, not metal or glass, as he takes a few steps backward and to the side. There’s a feeling like mist flowing around him, a bit of a chill penetrating the numbness, then nothing at all. When Martin opens his eyes again, some of the color fading out of the world as he does so, green grass shading towards grey, they’re free of the car. The monster still stands in front of it, features shifting and changing, nostrils flaring, eyes searching, but none of those eyes are focused on them.

From out here, Martin can see how far the car is from the road, how the passenger side door had been half-caved in from where the monster had struck it, dents and scrapes on the roof telling him that the car must have rolled over at least once before coming to a stop. If Martin had been sitting in the passenger seat, the blow from the monster might have killed him outright. He looks at Jon, who is standing next to him, holding on to his arm. The colors of the landscape might be faded, muted things, but Jon is not. His eyes are still glowing faintly, and the blood soaking into his sweater and dotted along the side of his face is bright red. “Jon? Are you all right?”

Jon follows Martin’s gaze, touching under the sweater with his free hand and then giving a grim little nod. “All healed up, whatever it was.” He reaches up, touching the side of Martin’s forehead. Martin can feel the warmth and pressure of Jon’s fingers, but there’s no accompanying sting of pain. “Are _you_ all right?”

“Everything hurt before,” Martin says. “And now nothing does. I don’t… I don’t know.”

Off in the distance, something howls, the sound stretching on far past a normal animal’s capacity to make. The monster lifts its head, answering back with a chorus of sounds of its own. Martin watches the monster lope away, its gait surprisingly smooth for something with so many limbs. Was it a creation of the Flesh? The Hunt? Both?

“Martin?” Jon squeezes his hand as he says his name, the warm pressure giving his wandering thoughts something to focus on. “Martin, I think we can go back now.” Jon looks at him, the crease that worry has carved between his eyebrows as deep as a chasm. “Can you do that, or should I?”

“I’ve got it,” Martin says, squeezing Jon’s hand back. He doesn’t close his eyes, not for this. He looks at Jon’s face, the worry and concern there, and thinks about green grass, about kissing Jon by a field of shaggy cows, about how tightly Jon holds on to him when they sleep, letting the warmth of those memories draw the both of them back into the world.

The transition isn’t easy. It reminds Martin of when Jon had lead him out of the Lonely, that sudden lurch as everything had hit him all at once. Color floods back into his surroundings so suddenly that Martin has to shut his eyes against it as warmth and feeling and pain rush back into his awareness like blood returning to a limb that’s fallen asleep. He gasps, sagging against Jon, holding on to him tightly as he waits for everything to stop being so _much._

“I have you,” Jon whispers before Martin stops Jon’s words with a kiss. It’s not that Martin wants Jon to stop talking, it’s just that he needs to be even closer to Jon, needs that warmth to chase away the damp chill still clinging to his bones. Maybe Jon understands, because he presses even closer to Martin, one hand cradling the back of Martin’s head so tenderly that Martin almost weeps from the intimacy of it.

The kiss is an endless, breathless thing, and when Martin finally pulls back and opens his eyes, the world no longer hurts to look at, no longer presses at his skin like an ill-fitting, itchy sweater. He sighs with relief, then winces at the throb and ache of his head.

“What hurts?” Jon asks quickly. “Have you broken anything? Can you see all right? Are you dizzy?”

“It’s mostly my head,” Martin admits. “And, well, _everything_ hurts, but not in any dramatic sort of way.” He looks at car and tries not to think how much worse it could have been.

“Right,” Jon says. “Sit down for a moment, and I’ll see what I can pull out of the car.”

“I can help,” Martin protests, but he sits when Jon gives him a look.

It doesn’t take long for Jon to pull their belongings out of the wrecked car, hauling them through one of the broken back windows and over to where Martin is sitting. Daisy’s first aid kit, if you could call something near the size of a small suitcase a “kit,” contains so many drugs to kill pain that the trick is finding something that will leave Martin conscious, but they manage to find something stronger than mundane but less exciting than exotic that dulls the pain down to almost nothing.

_Basira’s going to kill me for wrecking the car,_ Martin thinks as Jon applies antiseptic to the gash on his forehead. _No, wait, Basira said it was basically Daisy’s car, so Daisy…_ “What are we going to do?” Martin asks out loud before that thought can reach a conclusion.

Jon’s eyes glow faintly as he tapes gauze to Martin’s wound. “There’s a town about a mile away,” Jon says, his gaze distant. “They have a camping supply store. Small place, but they have the basics. We can leave money under the till in case the owner comes back.” The glow of Jon’s eyes brightens suddenly. “He’s— he’s looking up at the sky right now. He’s been staring at it for hours….”

Martin reaches out and grabs Jon’s hand, watches as Jon blinks and comes back to himself, the glow of his eyes dimming again.

“Thank you,” Jon says. “Sorry.”

Martin shakes his head. Hours ago he would have told Jon to try and stop Seeing things, but now he realizes that Jon’s abilities, his _own_ abilities, might be the only way that they can get through this. Martin finds himself wondering if next time something attacks them, would it be possible to send _it_ elsewhere, send it away into the fog and mist? That doesn’t feel like a safe road of thought to go down, but are any roads safe in this new world?

“We just have to be careful,” Martin says out loud. “Make sure we don’t get lost.”

Jon nods, and something in his eyes tells Martin that he Knows all the layers of meaning in what Martin just said.

A few moments later and they’re walking down the road, once again on their way, hands firmly clasped together, leaving fear once more behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> Coping with the state of the world by writing fic, as nature no doubt intended. This was sitting half done in my WIP folder for awhile, and then the months flew by and Season 5 will be here in a few weeks. Who else is excited and mildly terrified?
> 
> I’m [angel-ascending](http://angel-ascending.tumblr.com) over on Tumblr and [angel_in_ink](http://twitter.com/angel_in_ink) over on Twitter if y’all want to stop by and say hi!


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